Transcript
Shlomo Kugler (00:00)
I mean, I believe the only way to use AI at the consideration stage is if the viewer simply doesn’t know it’s AI. If they start to smell it,
you can’t have it. If they don’t smell it, you can
Al Ludwig (00:11)
Consideration I’m I’m a eliminate. I’m with you, right? Once they’re interacting with my firm, they’re considering my firm, I want them to know that they’re humans that are gonna be there caring for them every step of the way during one of the probably toughest times of their year, if not life. Shlomo Kugler, thanks so much for coming on the Law Firm Brand Builders Podcast.
Shlomo Kugler (00:34)
Thank you so much, Al, for having me on.
Al Ludwig (00:37)
So so you’re the founder of Benchmark Commercials and you work with a bunch of personal injury law firms across the country. And so I have to ask you, when it comes to video marketing, what’s one thing personal injury lawyers should keep in mind? I mean
Shlomo Kugler (00:50)
questions loaded. There’s so much behind that. What they should keep in mind when they’re doing video marketing. It really depends on the firm. Depends what their objectives are. But the first thing that comes to mind is a very basic thing, which is that people are not going to work with you because of what your settlements are. People are not going to work with you because of how many years you’ve been doing this for or maybe because you love fishing or you love baseball. People don’t care about that.
These are people that have been injured and are in of the most overwhelming moments of their lives. They’re in distress. They’re seeking to find an attorney who, yes, will get them the greatest settlement that they can, will get them the justice, but they’re really subconsciously looking for an attorney that is there to hear them, understand them, be there to look at them and to hug them and to hold their hands when they’re crying, when they’re going through what they’re going through. That is what they’re looking for. And
All the other things I mentioned could be communicated in many forms. These feelings that I’m mentioning, the only way to truly bring it out is through video. So whoever is your video provider that is creating that video content for you, that is something that must be in there and you must feel that weight. Like that Hollywood movie where you get the chills watching the video, that’s what you have to get in this video. If you don’t get that, you’re done.
I mean, that is what you need to be able to actually convince people to trust you, to want to work with you.
Al Ludwig (02:21)
So would it be fair to say I th I feel I feel like I’m here and it’s almost table stakes, all those other things that you mission at beginning where it’s they don’t necessarily in the moment care about your settlements and how much how much you received for your clients and whether you like you know what your hobbies are, all that. Because in in a way, if they’re in the funnel with you, it that should probably be understood that you’re a law firm that that has some type of accolades. And so now you’re trying to convert them and you need real storytelling.
you need to be pulling at the emotional kind of you mentioned the three pillars, three emotional pillars that you utilize. And when when you mentioned that to me, I liked it because I like formulas. And and I can talk about a formula I work off of for like T V commercials and things like that. but I’m curious about the emotional methodology for video marketing for personal interview law firms from your perspective. Sure.
Shlomo Kugler (03:18)
So I think I’ll backtrack a little bit into just what my background has been like in the past five years, right? I’m not jumping to origin story here, but what has happened is we started working for PI firms. It wasn’t really direct decline. It was through white labeled marketing partnerships for the most part. And while we were doing that, I got to interview hundreds of attorneys, clients, and that was
Kind of what was going on behind the scenes. And our digital face then was actually recovery centers, addiction mental health facilities, where we needed to create video content that was so emotionally compelling that you could have somebody that’s in their room all day, that’s maybe been to many facilities and they just don’t trust the system anymore and they’re done. The next step is God who knows what. And they see a video that we produce. And I mean, we’ve had results where we literally have somebody. We got someone to leave his room from one state, hop on a plane.
go to another state to check out that facility. I mean, we were able to do a lot of crazy things with video. And we created a methodology over there, which was how do you convince someone to do something like that? That’s so crazy. How do you do it? How do you speak to their heart? And what we discovered was that the heart and soul of every addiction facility was not really being communicated properly to these people sitting in their rooms all day. And yeah, we were doing PI firms. We’re doing those videos. And I would like to say that
The video content we were doing did have that emotional piece to it anyways. But our methodology actually started to form into something pretty incredible. So while we were doing these interviews with a lot of these clients that were injured, I started to notice like I’m coming into the space. I have nothing to do with the space. And I’m there thinking, like, okay, so this guy’s gonna say how many millions of dollars he won, and that guy’s gonna say how many millions of dollars. And I was genuinely curious, but these people never said it once.
I promise you, no one ever said their settlement number and it was public information. Nobody ever said it. No one ever spoke about how their life’s so amazing today. What I did hear was maybe about that two AM text message where they were going nuts. They were scared and the attorney answered. Maybe it was the attorney that was helping them with their groceries, which is pretty wild thing for the public regular pr individual to think when you see these billboards of attorneys with axes. I mean
That is something that’s not going to make someone think that they’re going to help you with their groceries. Maybe it was those phone calls, a lot, a lot of things like that. That’s what was being spoken to us about, not about the settlement numbers. And that’s where we realize that trust really plays a big factor. So those emotional pillars like we were mentioning is the first one’s identification, which is I do a little bit of an audit on attorneys’ websites. I love when I see a video that they did in the past because 99% of the time it starts talking about either
how incredible their firm was, how what the history was, or maybe about their own personal story, whatever it is exactly, they’re not talking about the client, the person who’s listening to it. So a video needs to start off where it’s something along the lines of you might have been injured and maybe you’re going through an extremely emotional, distress, stressful stage of your life. You don’t know where to turn. You need someone to listen to you. You need somebody that is able to hold your hand and get you the justice that you deserve.
You need someone to be talking to that client. Now, with addiction facilities, we actually would have a client speaking first at the beginning of the video because no one cares about the facility. They care about the outcome. With attorneys, it’s a little bit of a it’s a little bit different, I think, because you also need to feel that authority, that level of authority where it’s like, no, no, these guys got my back. So you need to have the attorneys actually start off talking, but they talk to the client’s emotions at the beginning.
And then you know, we weave in other client lines in there, but identification is the first pillar. The next two pillars we call trust and hope slash call to action. The trust, where I mean all of this is building trust ultimately, but the trust is basically all of the differentiators of that firm being put into a segment where they’re basically giving their sales pitch, saying everything about them in the most compelling way possible. I mean.
This could be I mean, I s I think you did a post about no fee, that you did that, right?
Al Ludwig (07:36)
fee unless you win and what a lot of market research tells us and and simply listening to intake calls, listening to clients early, early in the phase, right? Where you know I I typically know and I’m sorry to kind of interrupt y’all, we’re we’re gonna get back to those those pillars. but a lot of times like towards the end of the experien the experience, they talk about just that, right? The experience, the relationship they developed with the attorney, how that made them feel felt
cared for all of that. We found early on in in the process, a lot of times what they talked about were some of those very tangible benefit oriented items that as marketers and lawyers we become numb to. Like Indian Interact, give me a call. There’s no fee unless you win and it’s a free case evaluation, case review. It works. When whatever whenever we look at the the numbers, whenever we
interview people on why they called, what makes them more likely to call. And one one market research study we did in a major top thirty Metro, this most recent one, but I I I find this happens in most major areas, is when you put in the no fee unless you win, and I mean deliberately communicate that there’s no fee unless I win your case, meaning that you you there you have nothing to worry about with calling us.
You’re not gonna spend any money and we’re gonna try to make this as easy and simple as possible for you. There was a fifty percent more likelihood for the people who understood that to call that law firm as opposed to another law firm that didn’t promote that or didn’t promote it in in a intentional way. And I always found that interesting because again, as a marketer, you go, I don’t wanna say no fee unless I win for for this client, because we all say that. And I’ve said that for so many clients, but then when we look at the brass tax numbers.
it just ends up converting more. And so I like like to work it in in unique creative ways, ideally, where it doesn’t sound like the same if four law firms are saying the same thing. And then you have the one intangible that you mentioned, and that is in in law and personal injury law especially, having that person on screen, having the lawyer, having the authority. And I think it’s not just for the authority, but it’s also because if we’re all out there saying the same general thing.
The one differentiating factor can sometimes be that person, that face, the way they sound, the way they move, the way they come across, and that person resonates with a certain port portion of the population that attorney A, B, and C didn’t. and we find we find that a lot too. And so it’s just a few interesting little tidbits that I I find along that user journey when it comes to video marketing. But I’m I wanna I want to get back to the pillars. What was the first
Shlomo Kugler (10:24)
No.
Al Ludwig (10:28)
Emotional pillar again.
Shlomo Kugler (10:30)
So I let me let me tell you, I just my my thoughts are running because I I like the insights that you’re saying here. I mean what’s very interesting and and bring me back to what you’re saying in a second, but what’s interesting, what I wanted to say also is that we’re a video company and you know, there’s a lot of strategy that we put into what we do. I I believe more than any video company out there. You know, I I say that in the most humble way because that is not something video companies are trying to do. We try to have as much strategy as we possibly can where it’s also not going to infringe on what the marketing company is doing.
So being able to track things, look at the metrics, the way you’re doing it, where you actually get those insights of no fee unless we win, that’s something that, yeah, we hear it, we repeat it, we make sure people say that on camera. But hearing it for someone like you is very valuable for us. And that’s where other video companies, they will be trying to run their own show, but we’re like, hey, let’s work with your marketer. Let’s hear what they believe will work best for you. Because there’s so much strategy that’s involved in all of this.
You know, the no fee unless you win. I I think to your point about the differentiators, you want to bring that out well. I believe from what I’ve seen is that I mean, I’ll even make an argument here. You could technically have the most cheesy lines at the end of the video. Not that you should, but you technically could if you have all that emotional weight right behind it, supporting it. So if someone feels so identified with in this video and then you say something maybe you shouldn’t, technically speaking, it will still be a home run. Now that’s not the goal.
But that goes right into the three pillars, which the three pillars, our emotional methodology. I’ll just say this for the soundbite, which you probably want. Is we’ve got three pillars for our emotional methodology, which is identification, trust, and hope. So identification is basically where you’re identifying with this prospective client with their emotional, emotionally stressful situation that they’re in right now. Because if you don’t identify with them, then you can’t unlock them.
People are buyers and they have walls all around them. The way to break down those walls to even get them to listen to you and to consider you is to identify with them. Once you’ve identified with them, then you can build trust and only then. And that building trust basically are all of your differentiators getting fused into a section talking about who you guys are, what your practice areas are, all of the above. And after that, even if you’ve identified with them and you’ve unlocked their ability to trust you and you’ve built that trust with them now.
If they don’t feel the hope they’re gonna get the justice they deserve from the case, they are not going to work with you unless the other attorneys out there are terrible. But there’s a lot of competitive markets that we’re in right now that are across the country. And typically people have pretty good options in front of them. So you want to have the ultimate sales pitch that you can. And that’s what these three emotional pillars do. When you have them in your video, they create your ultimate sales pitch video. Like a lot of times attorneys say, you know, and I’ll have a conversation with them, I’ll say, Hey,
When somebody is speaking with you, right? Let’s say intake passes them on to the attorney, however it is, when the attorney actually is sitting across from someone and I say to him, Hey, could you convince somebody to work with you? Every single time. They say, Yeah, every time. I’ll always convince someone to work with you, with me. So I say, okay. Then so then the next best thing to that conversation is this video. If you could have that in-person conversation with someone and convince them to work with you, imagine we could do that with the power of video.
And then every single time someone is considering working with you, they’re going to have that punch. And no one else out there that they’re looking at will have anything close to it. I feel like I I’m not answering another question.
Al Ludwig (14:06)
No, no, no, you definitely definitely are. And I I enjoy that because you you also had talked about the consideration stage a lot, right? And that’s that’s what I feel like I’m hearing a lot of. It is almost a landing page videos, right? Like that help substantiate who I am. I I made my way to it one way or another. That journey could have come in a thousand different ways. For some people, the journey in finding a personal injury lawyer is someone said, You should hire a personal injury lawyer because you’ve been in the wreck.
And so they search personal injury lawyer near me and they just want to get through the process and they click real quick. Now that’s that’s one example. Other people do a lot more research, but they click, they land on a landing page, and now they’re on that landing page and they have something substantial like that because they’re even though they’re they’re moving through that pipeline very quickly, they’re right there in consideration. We have a chance to to to convert them. But they probably are spending a little bit more time now just making sure that
it makes sense for them to contact you. And if you can overlay that those emotional aspects, I think it’s going to be very important along the way. And those pillars that you mentioned for personal injury law, I think blend well with I I mentioned earlier, I like formulas. Right. Because especially when it comes to creativity, because it gives you the the guideposts, but you can turn it into so many different things. You can
You can be cheeky with it, you could be serious with it, you could be impactful and powerful with it, but you can still accomplish very similar things and hit your emotional pillars. And then on the formula side on my end, when I’m talking about like a TV commercial, a 30, 15 second TV commercial, I’m trying to do those things that you mentioned, but I’m in such a a a short time frame. And I’m also trying to be direct response and brand building that I I work off of the pillars of ease, speed and greed.
And I did not make that up. I I’ve worked with some amazing people who who had come across that in their own work, people the people like Gordon McCartney and injury attorneys and other production companies I worked with. And, you know, ease being the ease of making the entire message feel simple. So is it is it easy to understand what the firm does? Is it easy to understand when I should call? Is it easy to contact the firm? And is the process going to be easy?
Now you can communicate that very quickly and concisely, but it’s an underlying aspect of is this going to be easy? Which if you make it easy, you get you’re getting rid of the friction, right? The other one is speed. So that’s about the urgency, the response, the relief. Typically in the personal injury space, the the hiring window is actually pretty short, four days or less in in in many instances, and sometimes it’s almost immediate. And
They’re in an emergency state. So they’re taking emergency actions. And so we need to communicate to them speed. They can call now, they can call anytime. They will talk to someone immediately. They will get their answers fast. We’re going to start moving forward quickly for them. They don’t have to wait on the insurance company. You know, so ease and then speed. And the last one being greed. And that’s the one that kind of gets a bad rap for a lot of people.
‘Cause when they think greed, you know, you think money, you think of wanting money and the whole accomplishment being money. And it’s true, that is the money aspect. But ultimately you’re hiring a personal injury lawyer for for a couple of reasons. One is you you’re not sure what to do, but the other is probably because you’re having money issues, because you have medical bills, you have a messed up car and and you don’t know what to do. And you need to make sure that you’re putting food on the table. Right. And so being able to communicate clearly that
The insurance company is not automatically on the injured person’s side, that we may get you more money than what the insurance company says. that you’re more likely to get more money if you hire a personal injury law firm. And we have proven success of doing that for people like you. and I think that’s where the settlements and the big numbers can come in in a way that makes sense because you’re making sure that you’re not pushing it out there to tout, you’re pushing it out there.
As proof of work that I did this for these people who fit the profile of who you are. And I want to do that for you.
Shlomo Kugler (18:28)
Now
that’s all really good stuff. You’re you just gave me like 30 minutes of talking material. So I’ll just I’ll tell you a couple of things that come to my mind because I I really like that. And I I mean, as we all know, and any vendor out there in the space, legal vendor, anyone listening to this, I mean, the longer something is in the pipeline, the less likely it’s going to close. That’s just how anything works in sales. And definitely the speed is something you need. The East.
I mean, an attorney saying that they’re gonna take care of the case, they’re gonna take care of everything for you. Don’t worry about the details. I guess that’s there right in front of you. The greed, my belief is when you make a sale, are you trying to say everything about you, throw everything at them, and even say what their dream island is going to be? Or do you focus more on their hell island first? You focus more on their hell island first. I mean that that’s the answer.
In order for them to start thinking of, wow, where could they take me, you wanna first hone in on how terrible a situation is right now, how you understand that. And that greed is going to follow suit afterwards when they can trust you. So that’s kinda how I would say we incorporate that. But two things that often might go.
Al Ludwig (19:41)
Perfect
because like you’re you you’re speaking to it, right? The greed aspect in this. And greed is just the G, right? It it stands for the money aspect of of the business, of the work. And part of that is that emotional hell that they’re in right now because they know that that they don’t know what to do with their car, they don’t know what to do with their back, and this is gonna cost money. And acknowledging that, right, is important because you’re you’re letting them know that this is something that we’re gonna relieve.
Provide relief for, right? And speak emotionally to them. And that’s what and that’s why I was also saying, you know, when I say e-speed greed, it sounds simple, it sounds formulaic, but the way you can execute it can be done in a thousand different ways in the manner that makes sense for for that specific firm in that specific market, cross-referencing with what the competition’s doing to make sure we differentiate ourselves and and how we want to also also be known. Like I I work with some some law firms that are really on the nose.
about it and I work with some other law firms that are like it’s gotta be very subtle for us because I I don’t like to talk about it. You know, I like to talk about the help and the journey and and and how we’re gonna uplift you. Right. And that’s and that’s a brand that’s a brand choice one way or the other. another reason why I like this space is there’s no it’s no rule that any one thing is is gonna work better than the other because I’ve seen so many different things work in so many different ways.
Shlomo Kugler (21:09)
That’s
interesting. I mean, that’s why you gotta as a marketer, I’m sure you you’re not just focusing on one thing. You know, you you gotta have the whole picture. I mean, this is with everything in life. Yeah, the whole the whole body approach, the whole everything approach. But you got me thinking something very interesting. I think you’ll relate to also when you’re doing this is the East Speed and Greed. I mean, we’ll we’ll cut out the greed for a moment ’cause that’s that’s just complicated. But the the easing the east and speed, like you mentioned that you’re you work with T you know for ads, T V ads.
And yeah, you know, we do TV ads also. Our main bread and butter obviously are the website videos, is the consideration stage. but what’s very interesting is you only have a few seconds on a TV ad, right? And we look at that the same way for these website videos. I mean, the first five seconds, you gotta hook them. You have to capture them. that’s the identification and even just what you’re showing the visually. Every second in the video, we really try to account for and think about what goes into that second and what that means.
is there’s many different layers to how every second could be more and more powerful. And in an ad on TV, you have to be especially careful with this. So I think a great example is you could have, let’s let’s bring trucking for instance. I mean, I I keep seeing trucking on LinkedIn. I don’t know about you, but this is what everyone’s trying to push out these days. Everyone’s trying to be the number one trucking attorney in their state. And you could have a video where you talk about trucking, how you’re that expert, right? That that’s one stage.
one layer. You could add a layer by showing in your office. You could show, you know, on your smartboard or TV, you could show some pictures of trucking accidents in the visuals of you showing it to whoever in the conference room, your your team. That’s another layer. You could have another layer, right? We’ve done all these layers. It really comes down to how much time are you willing to invest in a shoot. what are you trying to accomplish? Trucking your primary focus or car accidents or
But the next layer is we actually take people out, take these attorneys out near an overpass near a highway. And you have them just walking by looking at trucks. And it sounds cheesy, but visually it looks unbelievable. The stage after that is we’re actually working with a firm right now that they want to be the number one trucking firm in that state. So even looking at trucks passing by, that’s not gonna make you number one. What’s gonna make you number one is we bring you to body shops, we bring you to places
Maybe even to a place where, you know, like different types of mechanics. I I don’t even know how these things work. But the point is you’re bringing them to off site locations that bring out that trust. And in a three second clip, let’s say, the difference of those layers is dramatic. Especially when you’re spending money on an ad. I’ll actually tell you we did we filmed an attorney by an overpass once. And let me tell you something. Have the attorney stand there for more than I would say two two minutes.
At the overpass, because we had him just looking over and it was like five minutes. And suddenly we had heard sirens and we had a few cops pull up. we quickly took our drone down, you know, just in case one play is safe. And they’re like, Hey, we got many calls that there was a jumper. And we’re like, Whoa, okay. After that, I mean we learned our lesson that you don’t have an attorney be up there for more than five minutes looking over an overpass. But
Filming those shots, filming whatever it is you can that will make videos that will visually resonate. another great example also just to go on a tangent is let’s say you want to be the number one, I mean, this is a classic that we firm filmed for Bird Davis in Austin. And you want people in Austin to feel that this is the Austin law firm. This is the one that gets them. And we filmed them at the I think it’s called the Pfluger Bridge. The Pfluger Bridge, I’m not sure how you pronounce it.
But you film these attorneys, you bring them to visually recognizable locations, places that will make them feel the I think you call the patronage, will help them understand exactly it’s like these guys get it. They get it, right? You you wanna hit that on every single way that you can in the video. The other thing that comes to my mind with the East speed and greed is website videos sound very basic. Like, okay, you just put them on your website.
When your SEO, PPC, what whatever it is is bringing people to the website, they see it, builds trust, they call you, right? That’s the most basic way to look at it. And I mean, that’s what our messaging typically says to attorneys. But there’s awareness, consideration, conversion. Everyone looks at these stages as different things, but there’s a lot of ways to look at it. I mean, there’s before the call. That’s the probably the biggest problem when you look at how many web visitors that you actually have that are not picking up the phone. But what about the ones that pick up the phone that don’t convert? If you have a problem there.
Okay, you know, I I’m sure you have your stats of how many attorneys don’t even pick up their phones, but I’m saying the ones that do, who said intake is perfect at what they do? there’s a lot of different techniques we we use. I mean, there’s the FAQ technique where you have frequently asked question videos on the website so that the person picks up the phone already in buying mode, which means that the intake call is much more productive. It’s more about next steps than it is of should we work with you, should we not? Even the common objections, something we do, which I think is pretty cool.
Is we worked with I’m not gonna say the name again, but for the sound bite you’ll probably pull out. We worked with this law firm in Austin. Great shoot. Love the work that we did there. But one of their issues, which we uncovered during the discovery process, was that they’re an Austin firm. People in other cities think, they’re Austin. They’re not, they’re not gonna be the firm for me. So we created a twenty second video where they’re basically saying, like, hey, you could even be out of Austin.
And you still get access to the number one firm in the state of Texas because we’re able to do live calls. And that’s a video that their intake is able to use where when this objection comes up, they could bring it up on the call if they didn’t already watch the video. They could send it in the follow up email afterwards. They could send a practice area follow up in there. They could send a client testimonial that hits on their demographics. I mean, the strategy that we have on all these stages, it it’s it’s unlimited.
Al Ludwig (27:20)
I love that that last stage that you talk about. and and having those videos ready and canned and a part of an intake process so that after intake talks to them, you know, okay, yeah, they were asking about X, Y, and Z. And so I’m texting them the links or the files that answer it in more depth from the authority figure, right? Not just intake. And and providing those those videos during that process I always think is is it’s huge, especially if
You’re still in chase mode, right? They called and they weren’t ready to sign on that call. Right. I said, okay, well, then they there should be a chase process set up within that firm’s intake and how that person is treated over the course of of the next two weeks, how much they’re reached out to, the exact flow of what has reached out to them, and what from the intake call decides that flow based off of where what journey they were in, what practice area, what happened to them, and having videos as part of that.
I think is is huge and can make, you know, can increase that conversion of those people who have yet to make that decision. Because, you know, maybe they just want some time with it, maybe they want to talk to their wife, or maybe they’re one of the people that goes, okay, well, I I kind of got the sense of them. Now let me call this other law firm and and get the sense of them. And now it’s two competing law firms. Well, the one I would I would imagine that’s doing a a tighter chase and a more informative chase that also has
a video component to it, which helps just that itself helps elevate it to a higher level than what most most firms are gonna put out.
Shlomo Kugler (28:57)
Yeah, 100% on that. and you’re making me think about the client, the customer visual journey. We actually call it the CVJ. And people don’t even get to start thinking about this customer visual journey. Like, what does that mean? And I I think it’s more the education or the reminder of what the power of video could be. So in the world of AI, we’re seeing so much. I mean, it started off where attorneys were like, hey, let’s talk on our phones and put it on social media, right? That started to happen.
Then you started to get AI coming to the picture and helping speed this process up. And then you started having AI avatars, which I think people are starting to actually stay away from a little bit. But you’re getting all these different AI things that people start to forget about the power of humanity, right? When you use humanity properly, then that is the most powerful thing. I mean, all this AI visibility, all this everything, I mean, humanity. If you could speak to someone’s emotions.
That’s the most evergreen sales tool you can possibly have. and to your point about the arsenal, where intake gets to have an arsenal, what that actually looks like is imagine somebody calls up and what are the basics of their case? We’re looking at car accidents, we’re looking at someone who is Hispanic, we’re looking at s this person who is a little bit older, and
Maybe their frequently asked question that they’re throwing at you is just how long do cases actually take? They’re just burnt out. They maybe have gone through something in the past and they don’t wanna pull the trigger and something’s gonna take them three years. What happens next is they get an email that has which video? The practice area focusing on car accidents. They then that get a client testimonial that is of someone who’s Hispanic.
Who is older and then they get the frequently asked question about how long cases take. I mean, this is clearly the fastest way to getting the person to join, to sign. I mean, this is powerful. There’s no one else out there that’s doing it simply because people just forget. I mean, I just did a post today about how people are kind of pushing that AI panic button, which is, hey, let’s not fall behind. Let’s just
Keep going, like we’re doing well with our cases, maybe a little bit inconsistent month to month, but let’s just stay strong, stay on top of that AI. People are forgetting that hey, there there’s something called evergreen content, there’s something called materials that last for a long time, something that actually builds trust, right? That’s what we’re talking about here. and just to explain how that works, that’s the intake process, right? But how does that work even before they pick up the phone? There’s the brand story video.
That hits on their emotions, says everything about the firm, right? But they just heard about car accidents, truck accidents, maybe dram shop cases, maybe whatever it is. They just heard a whole lot of things and not everything’s perfectly relevant to them, but it hit and they’re like, let me find out a little bit more. They scroll down, there’s a few client testimonials, they’ll click on the one that visually connects to them. They’ll watch that, right? Then maybe they have the FAQ videos. And we hope that they’re actually gonna watch all these videos beforehand anyways, so that they’re in that buying mode like we discussed.
But if they didn’t, right, sometimes people skip over the website when they pick up the phone and they just call direct. So intake is there to kind of redirect them to the videos, right? Because when you have such powerful assets, you want to redirect them in every possible way. And that’s where we kind of spray them with many different techniques of throwing video at them, where in your email signature, are you having, are attorneys having, or the people sending the emails having their email signature where it says, watch what our clients say about us?
watch our brand story video here. Is that in every email signature that they have so that the thousands of emails that are going back and forth have that printed on it? Most people don’t have that. Yeah. A lot of basic things like that that I think because what we do, it’s not a monthly service. This is not something that we’re trying to scale like a marketing company that’s like, hey, let’s give you everything we got. Let’s go. Let’s be your growth partner. Because video companies are not
form to be that way, people naturally think of video companies being like, okay, there if you want a video, you get a video. You know, okay, I’ve hit a certain stage where refreshing our creatives, that’s what they typically say. Let’s get video. It makes sense. But video is there not just to compliment what you’re already doing. It’s there’s that it’s something that can actually amplify every single marketing effort that you’re making. And I said that too softly. I said that it can amplify. It 100% does when you have something so powerful. Yeah.
Go for
Al Ludwig (33:38)
Even
the operational aspects, right? That that’s what you’re I I feel like you’re hitting on hard and and and and bringing to light that a lot of people don’t think about is when we think about video marketing, right? We think TV commercials, streaming TV, YouTube, social media, but all the things we just talked about were none of that, right? It was it was the the informational content, the website content, utilizing it for chases on intake, implementing it into other
parts of your operation so that you can can always continually justify and explain who you are, what you do, connect emotionally at any stage the person is in. And in some cases, even if they’re already a client, right? and so that I I I liked how you framed a lot of that because it we can utilize video marketing also from an operational standpoint, from an intake standpoint, from a legal op standpoint.
And we can harness AI to help create many of those connections, workflows, automations that help trigger those in the time where they make the most sense for that to happen. And, you know, it’s it’s not it’s not easy work, right? It it it takes time, it takes money, it takes effort. But I think the long haul advantage of it, right, it it establishes your firm if if you have this implemented into it as heads ahead above.
Everybody else, because they’re not doing those little things. And those little things is what really makes one law firm really stand out from the next one. And you had talked about the AI avatars and and AI and video marketing. So I wanna ask you, what what mistake do you see law firms making when incorporating AI into their video marketing?
Shlomo Kugler (35:28)
Good
question. What would be the number one mistake that they’re making? I mean, without answering your question yet, the first thing that pops in my mind, honestly, is we’ve had a lot of firms where this this probably happened about six months ago, where firms were like, wait a second, we don’t know if we need video. We don’t know if we could do video yet. Like AI might do everything for us, and and they pause. And in that pause, which there’s some firms that are still paused, there’s firms that are starting to wake up now, and there’s firms that are already signing with us and
or scheduling out shoots. But in that pause, what happens is all of your marketing dollars are going to your website and there’s no foundational visual assets there. There’s nothing there that’s building the trust that’s clearly making you stand out over everybody else. So I believe it’s a missed opportunity, a major missed opportunity that people are not trying to create those video assets right away, but it’s starting to shift. And I think the shift is starting to happen because of something we call AI slop, which is where
People just try to have AI thrown into everything and people are losing touch where there’s actually I think there’s a study that went out that on basic post on LinkedIn, if you are going to start reading it and you sense a pattern subconsciously that this was me with chat G V T, you’re gonna either skip over it or laugh, like that’s AI. Yeah. And the second people sniff that in a video, they’re like, Okay, that I can’t like like you’re trying to you an uphill battle here. How are you gonna build trust with these people that were just in a car accident?
They’re seeing, think about the average person on the street. They’ve seen TV commercials for attorneys. They’ve seen billboards. They don’t actually think these attorneys are people that are regular human beings that have a family that are have hobbies and genuinely care about their clients. They don’t necessarily believe that. And I can tell you otherwise. I can tell you from interviewing so many so many attorneys, that stereotype is out the window. Because if you think about
The amount of podcasts that are out there on burnt out attorneys, the amount of episodes about attorneys burning out, if an attorney hasn’t burnt out, there’s either one of two things. Either it’s the greed, the ego, we’ll put that all into one bucket where they’re like they’re making money, they’re running, they’re moving forward fast. But if they’re not in that bucket perfectly, then you could get burnt out. I mean, attorneys care about their clients. When they’re not giving the right cases, you get burnt out.
so I started to think like this is this is not fair for these guys. Like these are great guys. They deserve to have many more of the right cases. I kinda stepped around your question. you remind me of your question again. Your question was, Hey, what what hits me first? I
Al Ludwig (38:09)
I I was I was saying what mistake do you see law firms making when incorporating AI into their video marketing? Right. But I think I think you hit it, right? And part of it was just that that with the new technology that comes along, it c over time it can get touted as being the the the golden goose to solve everything, right? And it just isn’t that case. ‘Cause wait, when you mentioned some of paused what they were doing because, you know, we’ll be able to do it with AI.
The next question is, well, who behind the scenes is going to be running that with AI? Who’s going to be creating it with AI? Because A AI is not just going to create it. It’s the tool for the creation, right? And and I’ve seen I’ve seen AI used in in a lot of video marketing, even for s for some law firms, and I’ve seen it used in just horrendous ways, right? And I’ve seen it used in interesting ways, ways where it’s the the video.
objectively uses AI and you can see that, but it’s not trying to hide that it’s using AI. It’s using AI as a as a way to to do a a pattern interrupt to emphasize a point like you would with a cool transitional scene or certain graphics and and music in the past, right? And I I I feel like the usage of AI and video marketing is over time it’s going to start going that route where it you you can use it or you cannot use it, but it if you use it,
Use it to accentuate the message and make the make the message more interesting while still leaning on the human that is delivering that message and the human that’s receiving that message. And there’s a couple shops out there that I’ve seen that do a pretty good job with it. But at the same time, on the flip side of that, some of the most popular videos right now are the gab videos. People just just yapping, right? Yapping the camera. And they’re they’re they gained popularity and are working really well within the alg algorithms because it’s
the most authentic style video out there where people are just yapping to camera, usually in selfie mode, about something that they know very well. Right. And for a lawyer, that could be talking about an interesting case. That can be talking about interesting things happening in their world. That can be talking about the the facts and figures of the world of personal injury law and marketing or what’s happening in your specific area. I think that’s a real underutilized one.
when it comes to like social media video, is how do I create content of myself tangentially related to what I do, but tied to the area that I do it in, talking about the specific streets, specific wrecks. You know, where I live, there’s the there’s the spillway between Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Louisiana. And if a wreck happens out there, say goodbye to the next six hours because you can’t move on that thing.
and being able to speak to things like that in an interesting way, I f I find’s gonna work well for for lawyers and attorneys without having to use AI because you’re staying local, you’re staying authentic. So that’s my my I guess slight rant about it. But I do see value and some fun usages of it from a lot of people out there. And I’ve been dabbling with it myself too.
Shlomo Kugler (41:20)
Yeah, I I love what you’re saying. I mean, I I agree with you a hundred percent on that. What what I can say and maybe repeating some of it is that there’s something called entertainment value. Entertainment value, you know, it at the end of the day, people like to be entertained. It doesn’t matter if they’re in a crazy life situation. That entertainment value is still a currency that we can leverage really well. So when it comes to bringing people to building that awareness about who you are and maybe getting them at least to that next step.
I believe AI, as long as you’re not trying to imitate something real, but instead you’re trying to accentuate things and it’s very clear that it’s fake, I think it does an incredible job there. Yeah. Where AI has no place in terms of going above and beyond is when you’re at that consideration stage. Because people don’t want to feel fakeness. They want to feel something real. I believe you could use AI to bring them to your website and start to consider you. But once they’re considering you, the currency there is not
entertainment value anymore. It’s more about keeping the viewer engaged really well where you also build that emotional connection and that trust. Right. Like you could have something extremely emotionally compelling, but if it’s a boring video, no one’s gonna watch it, they’re not gonna care about it. You have to keep them watching through from start to finish while building that trust and emotions with them. But where AI does have a place in that is when it comes to enhancing the video. So there could be a lot of small details in that. I mean
There’s lot of technicals and I’m not gonna bore your viewers with when it comes to fixing up audio, fixing up issues that happen. But what if you got a great drone shot?
Al Ludwig (42:57)
It’s work to implement AI into videos. You know, it’s it’s not easy. You know, to do it to do it well, like to and and to edit it well and transition it well. And and I think that’s where it gets lost. People see that, it it has AI in it, so it must have been like easy to create and it’s just not the case.
Shlomo Kugler (43:16)
I mean, I believe the only way to use AI at the consideration stage is if the viewer simply doesn’t know it’s AI. If they start to smell it, you can’t have it. If they don’t smell it you
Al Ludwig (43:27)
Consideration
I’m I’m a eliminate. I I’m I’m with you, right? Once they’re interacting with my firm, they’re considering my firm, I want them to to know that there are humans that are gonna be there caring for them every step of the way during one of the probably toughest times of their year, if not life. It’s just a a a this space is a is a space that is about humanity.
Right. I’m if I’m selling a sneaker, that’s one thing, right? That’s a collectible for most people. But if I’m selling a a service that I’m gonna help you get back on your feet, turn your life around and take and get your family taken care of, that’s a a whole different animal. And I think that needs to be con just always considered from the from the videos to the creative to the intake and all these other new systems that are being that are being plugged in that people are testing out.
But I think we’re we’re coming up on our hours or so, Slomo. So I wanna thank you for for coming on. I really do appreciate you taking the time and and talking about video and I and opening my eyes too. I I I tend to get stuck in the the marketing channel of it all, like the T V commercials and the you the the meant to can build my brand and convert aspect more than some of the consideration aspects of it. And I I think you’re you’re hitting on some
some fabulous points on how to utilize that across the entire user’s journey and not just until the phone rings.
Shlomo Kugler (45:01)
I appreciate that. And Al, you ask great questions. It’s it’s been a pleasure speaking with you on this podcast. I mean, I I guess if I had one message, if I had one thing that just hits me when I think about this of how to end off, is it’s there’s really two ways of looking at video based on everything that we’re talking about. It’s either you’re looking at video to actually amplify every single thing that you’re doing, and that’s when you’re in growth mode and you’re like, Let me amplify, let me just
Have more consistent cases, more of the right cases. But then there’s other firms out there that have a bit of the fear factor where they work the marketing companies that blow smoke at them. They have had a bad history with that. And they might look at video not in the growth mode perspective, but from the perspective of it being the insurance policy on all of their marketing efforts. Because every single marketing effort, every dollar they pour in is going to get amplified. It’s going to get saved. Where
I don’t want to say it like this, but even if your marketer is not up to par with where you want it to be, you’re still going to have even greater results because of the power of video being there in your sales funnel.
Al Ludwig (46:08)
It great final words. Well, Slomo from Benchmark Commercials, appreciate everything. And and if anybody needs wants to check you out, you’re active on LinkedIn, you have your your website. Is it just benchmark commercials dot com? Benchmark Commercials.com. if you need video for your firm, you make some of the best in the country.
Shlomo Kugler (46:21)
That’s it.
Thank you so much, Al. Take care.
Al Ludwig (46:32)
All right. And then hold on for a second.